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View Full Version : Website Affiliations and Trust Relationships



Halve
31 Oct 2007, 03:48 PM
It occurred to me today that webmasters and site designers need to understand the benefits available to them under Affiliations with OpenID Providers. Sites that are considering adding or building OpenID sign on and registration into their sites need to understand why they should consider Affiliating. Affiliate prospects should understand that whether or not they want to refer new users to an Affiliate Provider or not, it is in their best interest to complete an Affiliate sign up, as long as they trust the Provider, so they can share the branding when a user logs onto their site. As far as I know there are only two providers who allow sites to co-brand the login through an Affiliate program (myopenid.com and myVidoop.com.)

While there are many OpenID Providers for users to choose from, only two are working with sites to help enable, test and brand the user’s login and registration experience. As the number of OpenID users grows, it also makes sense that they might evolve to expect an affiliation with their provider of choice related to their trusted relationship. Sharing logo space with OpenID Providers is a key way for sites to show their approval or acceptance, similar to whitelisting, i.e. AOL. While other providers may follow this trend to offer co-branding for sites, the providers with the early relationships will be perceived by the public/users as the best few. Along with whitelisting, co-branding the login is a way to show the user that your website trust their OpenID Provider. Identity is certainly trust based and if OpenID is to grow to the level expected, those trust relationships have to be established early on.

So the question is; how does an OpenID Provider build trust with websites? I think the first step is obviously to Affiliate with as many websites as possible, building user numbers and possibly create some sort of public certification or endorsement for OpenID Providers. Naturally, the websites fear in accepting any OpenID is the fact that they have no way of knowing whether they have a good or bad reputation. You can only imagine what kind of problem it would create when a user has created an account with a random Provider and that Provider decides to stop providing its service? Now, the user cannot sign on to the sites that associate his account with his OpenID. Would this be something that comes from the web site community, from the OpenID community, from users? How can this message be delivered to websites and users? My thought is to do this through Podcasts, blogs or perhaps on the OpenID.net site? I would like understand the site owner perspective and create a campaign for sites around this topic and would welcome any input. This also relates to Providers offering to share their platform for domains and enabling the site as its own provider. This is a fantastic way for websites to offload the registration process and authentication by using an OpenID Server through a known and established Provider platform.


~Halve

Halve
06 Nov 2007, 09:32 AM
OpenID or OpenAd. Seems that is two different things.

Cesr,

I am not certain I understand your reply, but I do want to point out that if I seem to be advertising/advocating OpenID, I am. I think done correctly; there are certainly incentives and benefits to using OpenID in the design and implementation of web sites. The question and post is related to understanding why there have been so few web designers reluctant to consider implementing OpenID as an option to traditional login. Where login is not relevant, this certainly does not apply. OpenAd as in advocate, sure!

On the other hand, if your post is related to myVidoop and their sponsor or ad based solution, yes, I guess you could say OpenAd. Look at the right hand side of this site. Ads! They are the way sites can continue to operate and function by fueling development, maintenance and hosting costs. the folks at myVidoop have created a way to NOT take away from the pallet of web space available for site design the way that sidebar and banner ads do. The ads used in the myVidoop image grid are presented in a grid of 12 - 16 generic images and do not require click through or a diversion from the login process. If a user is interested, they can view the ad, if not, they simply login and continue. The best part related to web design is that the site is paid with every login and the design pallet stays open. Again, I guess you could say OpenAd, but great FREE services do need a way to generate operational revenue if they want to continue offering their services for free. I realize this is difficult to grasp as a concept, because it is completely new. You will soon see the large internet pillars moving in this direction in one way or another. I guess that is part of the definition of an evolving internet. Web based free services that make the internet a better place to work and play or simply Web 2.0 and identity 2.0 at work.

~ Halve